CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Izzie of the Almond Eyes
It was not often that Loveland came into personal relations with sunrise, and to see the rose and golden banners float high and higher above the roofs and sleeping windows of New York, was like being first gazer at some great painting in a Private View. There was hope and promise of joy in such beauty, but he felt wretchedly out of the picture in his rumpled evening clothes.
The virginal purity of dawn, translucent above the turgid darkness of the town, made Lesley Dearmer seem suddenly to be very near him, so that the air shone with her invisible presence. How sweet she was, how delicately quaint in all her thoughts, how kind to others despite her clear wit, and how sure of ultimate goodness, as she was of life!
Lesley had said that she had "faith in his other side," as she had faith in the other side of the moon, though she did not expect ever to see either. "You will always go on getting what you want," she had prophesied just before they parted. What would she think of that prophecy if she were even to dream of this humiliated figure, creeping out of night to a new day?
Bill's hatchet face glimmered sallow and shabby through the pearly twilight, and there was a frayed look under the patient, humourous eyes. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"A little," replied Val. "But I don't mind."
"You ain't used to the climate yet," said Bill, "and I'd make you squeeze into my overcoat, only I'm a bit too sketchy underneath. Can't afford to get me winter wardrobe back from my uncle's yet."
They passed out of the Bowery, and turned into Twelfth Street. Most of the houses still had their eyelids shut in sleep, and their brick faces looked dull, lacking all interest in life, as if it were hardly worth while to wake up for another day patterned upon a dreary yesterday. But in the middle of the first block there was one house which showed some faint signs of life.
Originally it had resembled its neighbours in all essential features, but the front on the ground floor had been altered, a large window of plate glass having been put in; and from this window a sleepy, sulky, bullet-headed youth was in the act of removing a few gouts of mud splashed up by some passing cart. Above the wide window, in all the glory of red and gold paint not yet faded, was the legend: "This is Alexander the Great's." Inside, its face turned towards the glass, was a big, framed blackboard covered with pictorial advertisements of various dishes, done in chalks of violent hues, while from a gilded strip of cornice depended large squares of cardboard glorifying Alexander the Great and his system, in lettering of black and scarlet.
"Yesterday's show," explained Bill. "My work, the whole lot. The cards last out the week; but the meenoo on the blackboard's new every day. I tell you, it takes brain work! Hurry up, chum. I'm late."
The sleepy youth left the door open, and they went in, passing directly into a room fitted up as a restaurant. The walls were painted with lurid representations of Alexander the Great's battles, the costumes and scenery having been studied more with a view to sensational effect than accuracy of historical detail. There was a wild melée of warriors mixed with palm trees, against backgrounds of rose-red sky, and cobalt sea; and the face of Alexander – always a prominent figure in each scene – was evidently a portrait done from a Hebraic model.
"What do you think of it?" asked Bill, who was hastily unbuttoning his overcoat, to reveal a collar of immaculate celluloid and a jacket or "blazer" of blue and yellow stripes.
"It's very striking," replied Val.
"My idea," said Bill, proudly. "Got it from the name over the door, as I passed by that first day. Came to me like a shot. And then I thought of the picture meenoos. When they're goin' to have rabbit, give 'em a rabbit nibblin' a bit of lettuce – make it realistic. When they're goin' to hev punkin pie, just make their mouths water only to see its portrait in the window, so they've got to walk in and eat a chunk of the old original, if it takes their bottom nickel. Now, while I work like heat lightnin', you amuse yerself examinin' my Shay Doovers."
As he spoke, he darted to a door at the back of the room, in front of which hung a red curtain. Behind this curtain he disappeared with his cherished overcoat, returning in a moment without the coat and with the materials for his work, in a wooden box originally intended for starch. Whistling melodiously "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," he mounted the low platform in the window, which supported the blackboard, and began to mop out yesterday's brilliant triumphs with a wet sponge.
A list of the principal dishes for the day had been jotted down for him in pencil on a bit of paper which he pinned to the frame of the blackboard lest memory prove treacherous in some succulent detail; and then, with true artistic abandonment, he forgot everything except his work.
Meanwhile, Loveland sought the neighbourhood of a huge stove which, its flaming mouth muzzled with talc, looked like a black, round-bodied goblin squatting, short-legged, on an island of zinc. The sulky boy had made up the fire; and carrying off a coal-scuttle full of grey ashes which he had raked out, he too vanished behind the red curtain.
Evidently ventilation was not one of the many popular specialities of Alexander the Great's establishment, for the atmosphere of the restaurant was heavy with the fumes of yesterday's food, the pictorial advertisements of which were being now expunged from the blackboard. There were gay duplicate patches on the two sides of this board; and Loveland thought, in faint disgust, that he could detect a separate smell for each dish represented. There was the ferocious-looking, horned animal which might be anything from a mere mad bull to a Minotaur, rising head and shoulders out of a blue cup. Yes, certainly the beast had left a rich, soupy perfume, which mingled curiously with that of the defiant fighting cock who spurred his way out of, or into, a pie-dish, and with the fruity fragrance of a roly-poly pudding which belched forth azure steam.
"Alexander the Great Fights Fair," announced one dangling card in the window. "Alexander the Great Wins Every Time," alleged another. "Alexander the Great Gives Great Grub." "Dine at Alexander the Great's, and you Dine like a Prince." "You Get From Alexander the Great for 25 c. More than You Get Anywhere Else for a Dollar." And so on, one glowing eulogy after another, all round the window and hanging like a fringe from the front of a large red desk at the back of the room near the window of a kind of butler's pantry.
The room itself, with its bare but tolerably clean floor, was crowded with small marble tables whose iron supports were painted light vermilion to match the desk, the chairs and benches; in fact, everything that could be red in the room was red, including doors, window-frames, and even the clock on a rough mantel-piece which cut one of Alexander's horses and a palm tree in halves.
Loveland had warmed himself thoroughly for the first time since leaving the Waldorf, and had lost his disgusted sense of the close atmosphere, when the red clock struck seven. At the same moment someone pushed aside the door curtain, and came into the restaurant from a passageway at the back. Val turned his head, and saw a very handsome, very untidy young Jewess.
Her heavy black hair was twisted up anyhow on the top of her head, and half a dozen patent arrangements for waving the front locks dangled low over the double arch of beautiful brows. A full white throat which would seem not quite long enough at forty, was gracious in its ivory curves at nineteen, even though it rose out of a purple flannel dressing-gown that left the wearer's figure to the beholder's imagination.
The girl came in yawning, but at sight of Loveland her languishing, almond-shaped eyes opened wide, and a lovely carnation stained the peachy sallowness of her rounded cheeks. She bit her full underlip, with little even teeth that were white as kernels of corn in contrast with the coral of her mouth.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, catching together her unbuttoned wrapper at the throat, and taking a step backward, towards the door. Suddenly she looked haughty, and a little defiant. "I didn't know anybody was here, except Bill. We don't open till seven thirty. People don't come in this early. But if you – "
"Thank you, I'm afraid I'm not a customer," said Loveland, pulling off his cap, and flushing a little with embarrassment for himself and for the girl.
"This gent's me friend. His name's Gordon – P. Gordon," explained Bill.
The girl laughed, self-consciously, pleased, yet half suspicious of the handsome young man who had paid her the compliment of taking off his hat. She was not used to men who did that, even for pretty girls like her; but then she was not used to such men as Loveland. She recognised the difference between him and the others, in an instant, and decided that he was not "guying"; therefore that she need not hold herself stiffly on guard. Not only was he the handsomest young man she had ever seen, but he was a "swell," and swells did not patronise Alexander the Great's. She wondered what he wanted, and why he should pose as a friend of Bill's. Evidently he had been up all night, or he would not be in evening dress at seven o'clock in the morning, but he had not the air of having enjoyed himself. Perhaps Bill had helped him out of some scrape. He looked gloomy and savage, like some gallant and beautiful animal driven to bay, an effect which interested the girl very much and made her like him better.
"I must trespass on your hospitality for a few minutes," Val said hastily, "until Mr. Willing has time to help me carry out my plans for the day. When he's finished his work – "
"You ain't in anyone's way here, I'm sure," returned the young woman, still eyeing the mysterious stranger aloofly, but with admiration. She put up one plump hand and uneasily touched the dangling hair-wavers, as if she wished to tuck them out of sight.
"This is Miss Izzie, that I told you about," announced Bill, in his best society manner, "the Boss's daughter."
The girl bowed, as she had seen heroines do on being introduced to heroes, in plays at an adjacent melodramatic theatre. "How often must I tell you, Bill, not to call me 'Miss Izzie'? Miss Isidora – if you please. I hate Izzie." And she glanced out of the corners of her long almond-shaped eyes at Loveland. "You're an actor, ain't you, Mr. Gordon?" she asked.
"No, I'm not," replied Val, stiffening slightly.
"Excuse me, if I've said the wrong thing," cooed the girl, in her soft, rather guttural tones, sweet as if she spoke with honey in her mouth. "I didn't see how Bill come to have a swell friend, unless 'twas an actor. Bill used to be always around the theatres before he worked for us, so I thought – " She paused, still gazing through drooped lashes; then turned away with a little shrug. "But I must go. I only came down like this, Bill, to have a look round for Pa, because he's sick with a cold. I told him I'd see after things till he's better. He don't like me foolin' round in business hours, with a lot of men staring and passing remarks" (she threw another glance at Val, to see if he were impressed by this exclusiveness) "but he feels too bad to care today. I'll go pour myself into my glad rags now and be down again as soon as I can."
"Boss sick, is he?" said Bill, who was finishing his work on the room side of the blackboard, by indicating a lobster with thick, scarlet strokes of fast flying chalk. "Won't be down till bye-and-bye!"
The daughter of Alexander the Great showed her dimples. "You think that means you'll get a free meal, I guess. When the cat's away – "
"And has got a pretty, kind kitten for his understudy," Bill finished.
"We – ell, you know I'm soft, don't you? If you want anything, look sharp and get it, or Pa might change his mind and pop in. Won't you have something, Mr. Gordon?" she went on, hospitably, dropping the rough and ready manner she used with Bill, for another attempt at imitating the stage heroine who was her ideal of high-born feminine graciousness.
"If you'll trust me till afternoon for the price of a breakfast," Val answered, trying to speak lightly.
"O!" she exclaimed, "I didn't ask you to pay. Pity if I can't invite a friend to have a meal, without anyone making a fuss. I was just guying about Bill. Besides, he's different. Pa throws in his dinner and supper as part of his pay, and he's supposed to look out for his own breakfast. He gets good money here, I'm sure, and if he's so soft that every old applewoman or lame bootblack can wheedle his money off him, why that's his business, and Pa says we ought to learn him better instead of encouraging him to go on the way he does. That's why I have to sneak him a doughnut and a cup of coffee on the sly sometimes. But I want you to understand I've invited you to breakfast, as a gentleman friend of mine, and I shall be real hurt if you talk about paying."
"Very well, I'll accept your invitation with thanks, provided you'll breakfast with me," said Val, as gallantly as if he were addressing a Duchess – or a popular chorus girl.
"My! I couldn't do that," answered Isidora. "Pa'd be wild if he got to know I eat a meal in the restaurant. We've a parlour upstairs," she went on, with a pretty air of importance, "and the hired girl brings our meals, Pa's and mine, for he doesn't have his down, either, except when he's in a hurry, and just picks up a bite as he goes. But you'll be seeing me soon again," she reassured Loveland. "I shall be at the desk in Pa's place."
This was her exit speech, and she made it close to the red curtain, which in another moment had blotted her out of sight. From some region beyond the drapery, now came an appetizing smell of breakfast: coffee, frizzling ham and frying sausages. The sulky boy, his face shining with kitchen soap, came in with a tray full of dishes, and a red-faced, middle-aged German followed, who stared with goggling, gooseberry eyes at Loveland, the while he clawed clean cups and saucers from a hidden cupboard.
Not fifteen minutes had passed when Miss Alexander alias Solomon reappeared, this time in all her glory, panting with haste and the snugness of her stays (perhaps she had drawn them in extra tight), yet smiling in conscious beauty.
"My, but you are got up to kill, this morning!" exclaimed Bill Willing; and the fair Isidora darted a vexed glance at him, for she had wanted the "swell" to believe that this gorgeousness was her daily toilet.
She had put on a red cloth dress, which might have been made to suit the restaurant, as well as the wearer; her bust was magnificently full, and her waist impossibly small. She had powdered her olive face to a pearly whiteness, and her black pompadour, with its bright undulations, looked as if it would have scorned the plebian aid of metal hair-wavers.
"Now, the show's ready to begin," she announced, with a smile and a glance, all, all for Loveland. And she was so lusciously handsome in her richly developed young beauty that Val, despite the revolt of his fastidiousness, admired her reluctantly.
No customers had come in yet, and Isidora insisted that Mr. Gordon should have his breakfast. Bill, she said, could go into the kitchen and "sneak something" from the cook; but it was Loveland's whim not to eat unless his chum ate with him, and Isidora secretly liked him the better for his loyalty to one so humble, not knowing that it was a new development.
She had little of Bill's delicacy in the matter of asking questions, and found it so impossible to restrain her curiosity that while Loveland disposed of ham and egg, coffee and a doughnut, she hovered near the table, trying with all her skill to probe the handsome stranger's mystery.
Inclined to be reserved at first, it soon occurred to Loveland that, since any port in a storm was better than no port, he had better enlist Miss Alexander's aid. In response to her bids for confidences, he said that he had landed in America yesterday, and had gone to the Waldorf-Astoria, to find on his arrival that his clothes had been stolen out of his luggage by an English servant. He added that his London bankers had been dilatory about instructing their New York correspondents; that when the hotel people, for some extraordinary reason known only to themselves, demanded immediate payment, he had been practically penniless, and had walked out in a rage, leaving everything, even his overcoat. Not only did he keep the secret of his real name and title, but he did not think it necessary to mention either his failure to get in at houses where he had left letters of introduction or his encounter with Mr. Milton. Yet, glibly as the story ran, it seemed to the daughter of Alexander the Great like a fairy tale.
She, with quick feminine instinct, recognised the vast social distance between "Mr. Gordon" and Bill Willing more poignantly than did Bill himself, who had now almost forgotten it in friendly association. But even so, to have sitting at one of her father's marble-topped tables, hungrily eating a breakfast on her invitation, a young man who could engage a cabin on the Mauretania and a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, appeared like a brilliant dream. She had never before seen anyone quite so gallant and aristocratic-looking as Bill Willing's friend; no, not even when she walked Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday at the hour of Church parade; and she was distressed at the thought that she would soon lose the wondrous visitor forever. She longed desperately to attach him to herself in some way, but could not see the way.
Eagerly she began to plan a course of action, thrusting Bill's advice aside. What was Bill that he should give advice? she asked scornfully – for Bill had never looked into her languishing eyes, and he was to her a mere painting-machine, scarcely a man at all. What did Bill know of uptown, and the ways of swells? But, she intimated, she had some knowledge of smart life. She had friends, Mr. and Mrs. Rosenstein, who were rich (though indeed no richer than Pa) and sometimes she dined with them at their flat in One Hundred and Fifty-third Street, or went to an uptown theatre in their company. Therefore she was competent to advise and to say "what was what."
She offered to send a District Messenger to the Waldorf-Astoria for the telegram Mr. Gordon was expecting, and any letters which might have arrived. "He can bring you the lot," she arranged, "and then you can send him to your bank, unless they make you show up to be identified. Anyhow, you can wait here for news. You can go on sitting where you are, or you can come and stay by me at the desk, if the tables fill up with folks for breakfast."
Loveland's face slowly reddened, and his eyes grew troubled.
"You needn't mind about the money for the messenger," she said quickly. "You can pay me back afterwards, if you're so awful proud."
"Why, of course I'd pay you back," Val assured her. "But – er – the fact is – " he hesitated, trying to find a way out of the tangled web "Mr. Gordon" had woven – "the fact is, I" – (he wondered if he could bear to go to the hotel and thus escape the difficulty about the name; but pictured himself arriving in evening dress by broad daylight, and felt his gorge rise at the degradation). "The fact is, anything coming for me at the Waldorf will have on it the name of Loveland. 'The Marquis of Loveland' will be the address on my letters."
"My goodness! you did fly high!" exclaimed Isidora, dimpling. "I guess it's no wonder they gave you a whole suite (she pronounced it 'soot') of rooms. But that's all right. You put on a card what you want the messenger boy should do, and you needn't be afraid to trust him. These little fellers are safe as banks."
With this, the first paying customer arrived, demanding beefsteak and apple pie for breakfast. Then, as if he had given the signal, others poured after him, all in a hurry, but all good-natured, and all bolting their meals (meals composed, it seemed to Val, of the most extraordinary dishes) with such incredible speed that the Englishman was startled. By the time he had finished writing his instructions, and a uniformed youth had darted off with them, almost the whole first contingent of breakfasters had gone, and given place to another.
Alexander the Great's clients consisted apparently of respectable employés of lower middle-class business houses. If they had not all been employed, Loveland reflected, they would not have been in such desperate haste; but then he had not yet studied the American temperament, north of "Dixie."
Bill Willing's habit was, when paid for his day's work, to find a seat in a small adjacent park and play with the children whose out-door nursery it was. There by witchcraft or wizardry his money was frequently wheedled from his pocket; and often by the time he returned to Alexander the Great's for early dinner, he was practically a pauper. It was after such conjuring tricks that he migrated at nightfall to his "country estate," as he called Central Park, and got through the hours as best he could, till half-past six next morning.
Today, however, he was encouraged to linger in the warm restaurant, Alexander's daughter being supreme in authority during her father's absence. Isidora saw that Bill had the food he liked best for breakfast; a steaming pile of buckwheat cakes trimmed round the edges with crisp brown lace, and oozing syrup at every pore. Also she sent him a copy of "New York Light" without having even glanced at the front page, although a "gentleman friend" who had paid her a great deal of attention last summer was at the beginning of his trial for a really exciting murder.
Isidora dreaded, yet longed, to see the messenger return, and at sight of the slim figure in blue bobbing past the big window she started so violently as to cover the floor with an avalanche of waiters' checks which had littered her father's desk.
The youth entered the restaurant and went straight to the table where "Mr. Gordon" still sat. Isidora could not hear a word of the conversation which ensued, but from under her eyelashes she contrived to see, without seeming to see, how the messenger shook his head in answer to questions, and how Mr. Gordon's face grew ever more blank until it hardened into an expression of hopelessness. She was sure that the boy had brought neither letter nor telegram, and that something had gone very wrong indeed with her mysterious guest's calculations.
An inspiration prompted her hastily to beckon Bill, who was earning the continued hospitality of the restaurant by trotting in with clean plates from the kitchen and trotting back with dirty ones.
"Here, take this, and pay the messenger," she whispered. "I guess your friend's had a disappointment."
Bill obeyed, but did not at once come back. When the youth had been paid, and had shot away up the street as if through a pneumatic tube, Bill lingered in consultation with the pale young man at the table.
"Something's up," Isidora said to herself, in an agony of curiosity. But what the "something" was, she could not find out till breakfast was over, and the room clear of customers.
It was by this time after nine, a late hour at Alexander the Great's restaurant, which the regular clients were deserting now for business; but others might drop in for a piece of pie at any moment, so Isidora caught at a propitiously quiet instant as she would have flown at a moving electric tram.
"The cable I expected hasn't arrived," explained P. Gordon. "It's all right, of course, when I come to think of it, and I'm not really worried, for I haven't paid enough attention to the difference of time between London and New York. I must send again later in the day, when there will be letters, too, perhaps, and people's visiting-cards. Meanwhile – "
"Meanwhile, stay where you are, and make yourself at home," cut in Isidora, hospitably. Nevertheless, she was anxious when she thought of her father, and the inevitable moment of his coming downstairs, heavy-footed with illness, and "cross as a bear with a sore head." Pa would want to have the beautiful young man in evening clothes satisfactorily explained, and it was borne in upon the girl that he would be rather difficult to explain. Non-paying people and things were always difficult to explain to Alexander, especially when he was under the weather. But – there was one way out of the scrape, and Isidora snatched at it suddenly with a leap of the heart. All might be well should she prevail upon Mr. Gordon to accept another loan from her – if he liked to call it a loan!
She had been saving up her allowance to buy a new ball-dress, and had already set her heart on the thing she would have. But she would deplete the sum by a third for Mr. Gordon's sake, if he would take the money and spend it as if it were his own, "for the good of the house." If he indulged in pickled clams or pumpkin-pie, or cold fried oysters, at intervals of, say every hour, under her father's eye, he would continue to be welcome to his place for an indefinite length of time, even though costume and conduct might appear open to curious criticism.
"Thank you, but Mr. Willing has given me a piece of good advice," said Val. "If it hadn't been for him, I shouldn't have thought of it, perhaps. He suggests my pawning a few things I have on me."
Now was Isidora's time to speak, and she offered her alternative suggestion, but with some stammering and confusion under the growing discouragement in Mr. Gordon's dark blue eyes. Nor did he let her stumble on very far. As soon as he gathered the drift of her faltering words, he broke in, thanking her sincerely, saying that she was most awfully kind, but he couldn't trespass any further upon her goodness. According to Willing, there was a pawnshop just round the corner. They two would go there immediately; and then, with money to pay his debt to her, as well as tide over unforeseen delays, he would be glad to come back for a time.
Not only had Isidora never seen a man like Mr. Gordon, but she had never heard any man talk as he did, unless perhaps on the stage. She could hardly believe yet that he was not an actor, and that the 'Marquis of Loveland' was not the name of some character he had played.
It needs hardihood to show oneself at nine o'clock of a cold, sunshiny morning in evening clothes. Loveland had not by any means got rid of his vanity with his other possessions, and he would rather have "run the gauntlet" at the risk of his life from cowboy bullets or Indian arrows, than face the grins and stares of a downtown New York crowd.
This time Bill did offer his overcoat, and press the offer, but to do Loveland justice, its shabbiness and inadequacy were not his principal reasons for refusing. Bill's "blazer" was not much warmer than tissue paper, its sole virtue, save on a hot day of summer, being the fact that it would cover a "dickey" and celluloid cuffs that had no visible means of support.
Luckily for Loveland's fortitude, however, the ordeal – or the out-of-doors part of it – was brief. He was whisked round the corner, and hurried mercifully into a dingy den which Bill Willing seemed to regard as a kind of "home from home," or, at the least, a cold-storage warehouse.
Loveland denuded his shirt of studs, took the gold links out of his cuffs, and produced his watch, asking almost humbly how much would be allowed for the lot.
The watch was of gun-metal; the sleeve links, the simplest he had owned, were destitute of precious stones; and the pawnbroker having examined the offered objects with an air of disparagement, mentioned the sum of nine dollars. When urged to make a higher bid, he remarked that he was "no Santa Claus," and at last showed himself so indifferent that Loveland was glad to exchange his despised belongings for one dollar less than the sum at first refused.
"I expect the old Curmudge will be on for his scene by the time we get back," said Bill, as they returned to Alexander the Great's after an absence of nearly an hour, during which time Loveland had provided his shirt-front with cheap celluloid studs.
But "Curmudge" – alias Mr. Solomon, alias Alexander – was still absent. His understudy, Izzie of the almond-eyes, continued to reign alone over a kingdom of marble-topped tables and empty red chairs awaiting their next occupants; but sixty minutes had changed her oddly. She looked up with a nervous start when Loveland came in with Bill, and hid in her lap the newspaper which had been lying before her on the desk.